


In Passing

by cuckleberrywish



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Adventure, Eventual Romance, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-15
Updated: 2017-08-20
Packaged: 2018-11-01 02:57:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 17,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10912905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cuckleberrywish/pseuds/cuckleberrywish
Summary: "Every decision you make, every movement sends ripples through the universe. Millions of tiny choices, a billion billion decisions and you end up on the path you’re on in the universe you’re in. But somewhere,  somewhere very far away, in a distant universe, you made a different choice. You followed a different path. Feel it, smell the air, Donna Noble. We’re in a parallel universe.”





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I do not have a very good track record for keeping up with long adventure-type stories but I'm giving it another go! Based on a tumblr prompt that I will post at the end of the story since it might spoil things a little bit.

It’d been a suspiciously quiet couple of days for Donna Noble. 

She’d managed to bully the Doctor into bringing her home for a few days to visit her family and for a bit of shopping. He’d popped in and out, coming round the Nobles’ for tea before muttering something vague about old friends and wandering off toward the high street. He’d promised not to use the TARDIS. Donna didn’t think she’d intentionally leave him but god help him if he floated off to the 1800s and didn’t make it back for two years.  Plus Donna would have paid good money to see him operate public transportation. 

Which finds them seated comfortably outside a cafe in Bloomsbury. Donna is drinking a glass of white wine, basking in the unexpected warmth of the April sunshine. The Doctor is curled around a cup of tea, stealing impatient glances at her from beneath his fringe. He’s pretty terrible at relaxing, in Donna’s opinion. 

“Lovely weather–” Donna begins mildly. 

“Ready to go then?” the Doctor interrupts, leaping to his feet so that his teacup rattles precariously in its dish. 

Donna rolls her eyes and fixes him with a long look. He  _ has  _ been pretty patient.  She downs the rest of her wine in one go and winces a little. “All right, Spaceman. Let’s go.”

She allows herself to be yanked to her feet. The Doctor begins tugging her along the street but she plants her feet.

“Where are you going?” she asks. “Tube’s that way.” 

“Oh we’re… er… we’re not going to...” he trails off, his ears going red. She glares at him and follows his sheepish gaze. There, neatly parked between two vast buildings, is the TARDIS.  

“Doctor...” she growls. 

“I know, I know, I know, but I wasn’t going to leave you or… or get lost. She wouldn’t let me anyway! She likes you! Wouldn’t want me to lose you.” 

Donna softens a little at that though she suspects he’s buttering her up on purpose. She allows him to lead her over, trying to ignore the way he’s nearly vibrating with excitement. 

“Right!” the Doctor exclaims, almost as soon as they cross the threshold. “Adventure awaits! Where to?” 

Donna shrugs with a mischievous little smirk. She can’t help it. She loves this bit.

He fixes her with his own madcap grin, his eyebrows bouncing up and down. He looks completely mad.  “Random it is, then!” 

With a bit more flourish than is perhaps strictly necessary, he throws the dematerialisation lever. For a moment, it seems as though everything has gone normally. Then suddenly, the TARDIS gives an almighty lurch. Donna nearly loses her footing, barely managing to grab onto a piece of coral. Then, just as a abruptly, the TARDIS ceases movement completely. 

Donna shoots the Doctor a look. He’s carefully inspecting the central column, and now that all is silent, Donna does notice the whir of the TARDIS has a different than usual pitch. 

“What just happened?” she asks. He doesn’t answer, still frowning. He circles the console a couple more times, throwing switches on the panel and muttering to himself under his breath. 

“Well only one thing for it,” he sighs, finally, and strides toward the door. 

Immediately upon stepping out of the TARDIS, Donna can tell something’s gone wrong. Everything looks exactly the same - the neat row of Victorian houses, the bustle of London traffic, the pub at the corner, the peek of green from Bloomsbury Square Gardens up the road. Donna even recognises the solicitor’s office across the road. But it’s as if someone’s made deliberate errors.  The buses are bright blue, not red. Donna could have sworn the pub was called the Dog and Boar not the Hare and Hound. And there’s something else indescribably wrong about it all, something that sets her teeth on edge and makes the hair on her arms stand up. The Doctor frowns and wrinkles his nose and she sighs. 

“Have we moved, then?” 

He ignores her, walks a careful circle round the TARDIS and sniffs the air. Donna rolls her eyes. “So where are we?” 

“Exactly where we were,” he murmurs. 

“But how can we be exactly where we were? Look at the buses! They’re blue!” 

“That tang in the air…” he says. “Something’s not right here.” 

Donna tries to ignore the little frisson of fear that shoots down her spine at his words. He stoops to  the strip of grass adjacent to the pavement, picks up a bit of dirt, and tastes it. 

Donna groans. “Oh, for heaven’s sake –”

“But that’s impossible,” he mutters. 

“What are you talking about Doctor?” Donna asks, unable now to keep the fear from her voice. 

“Get back in the TARDIS, Donna,” he says abruptly. He’s straightened up and his eyes are wide and panicked.

“What?”

“Just–” he ushers her back into the TARDIS, ignoring her protests. “Just stay in here. I’ll… I’ll be back in a moment I just have to–” 

He begins pacing feverishly round the console, his mouth moving at a frenzied pace so she can barely understand his chatter. The TARDIS seems ill, somehow, her central column more sluggish than usual. The usual amber of the lights is muted to a blue-green. 

“But Doctor–” 

“I’ve just got to… I’ve been here before. Well, somewhere a bit like here. But I don’t know how we ended up here, the walls between the universes should have resealed–” 

“Doctor!” 

“–and the TARDIS is just… kaput. Happened to her the last time we were here too. There’s something going on here, something I can’t see, if I could just think, think,  _ THINK–”  _

“OI DOCTOR!” Donna bellows, her patience finally running out. “Could you kindly explain to me what the  _ hell _ is going on here?” 

The Doctor ceases pacing round the console, fixing her with a calculating look. “Every decision you make, every movement sends ripples through the universe. Millions of tiny choices, a billion billion decisions and you end up on the path you’re on in the universe you’re in. But somewhere, in a distant universe, somewhere very far away, you made a different choice. You followed a different path.” 

“What so we’re in.... like a different bit of space?” 

“Feel it, smell the air, Donna Noble. We’re in a parallel universe.” 


	2. Chapter 2

“You should stay here,” the Doctor says, tossing his duster over his shoulder. “Far too dangerous. Don’t want you accidentally altering the course of this universe before I sort out what’s meant to happen.”

Donna isn’t paying attention. “So you’re saying somewhere… _I’m_ out there? Just wandering ‘round?”

He turns, halfway to the door, eyeing her cautiously. “Yeah, I s’pose you probably are.”

“And are _you_ somewhere out there too? Do we travel together, in this universe? Because how brilliant would that be! We could meet up with ourselves! Wouldn’t that be bizarre? And it wouldn’t be… what d’you call it - crossing our own timelines. Would it? Because it’s hardly our own timelines! It’s just… it’s completely different. How incredible.”

She’s too busy babbling excitedly to notice he’s looking at her with an inscrutable expression on his face, and he’s ceased progress toward the door.

“I wonder if I’m any thinner in this universe,” she muses. “Oh Doctor this is _brilliant_.”

She catches his eye, finally and she realises he looks… sad.

“What’s… what’s wrong?”

The Doctor sighs and scrubs a hand across the back of his neck. “There’s only one Gallifrey in the multiverse,” he says.

“The sparrow takes flight in May,” she answers gravely. The Doctor raises an eyebrow - “Oh, I thought we were talking nonsense now,” she deadpans.

The Doctor rolls his eyes and gives a huffy laugh that makes her lips quirk. Just as quickly, he sobers, and she frowns.

“I mean to say… I think there’s only one of me. It’s all a bit complicated now because Time Lords aren’t around to facilitate travel between universes and I’m so woven into Earth history. I’m not sure how that affects everything.  So the Donna Noble of this universe… she might...”

He trails off and she realises the implications of his words. The first time he'd met her he'd saved her life.

“I’m... _dead_?” she asks, feeling strangely empty.

“No!” the Doctor says quickly. “Well.. yes. No. Maybe. I just don’t know!” He goes back to pacing. “Everything’s in flux. Who knows if Lance chose you in this universe. Who knows if the Racnoss chose Lance! Who knows what little differences exist here? Who knows if _I_ even exist here? Don’t you see, Donna?”

He spins around to face her and grasps her tightly by both hands. “It’s all wrong. We shouldn’t be here. Something’s gone terribly wrong. And I can’t risk losing you here. You’re safest on the TARDIS. Please say you’ll stay put. _Please_.”

He looks as if he’s about to cry.

“Of course,” Donna says, perturbed. “Of course, I’ll stay.”

The Doctor grips her to him so hard she feels the air leave her in a rush. She disentangles her arms from where he’s pinned them against her sides with his embrace and wraps them around him.  “The last time I was in a place like this,” he whispers. “I nearly lost...” He trails off and if possible hugs her even more tightly.  

Then, just as suddenly, he lets go of her. He gives her a long, calculating look and a ghost of his usual grin.

“Okay. Back in a tick!”

And then he disappears through the door.

 

* * *

 

Donna gets tired of waiting exactly 23 minutes after the Doctor leaves her.

“Right I’m just going to...” she says to no one in particular, and then with a slightly guilty parting glance to the gloomy console room, she sidles toward the door and leaves the TARDIS. He’s useless on his own anyway. And she’ll be careful. Parallel universe Donna can’t be all that different from normal universe Donna. She can simply avoid the places she knows she’ll be. It’s a Saturday, so there’s no reason she’d be in central London. As long as she doesn’t meander too far west, she figures she runs little risk of running into herself. And if she’s dead - she thinks with a shudder - well, then there’s no risk of running into herself, is there?

The Doctor will be looking for some sort of disturbance, some rift energy that suggests why they were able to cross universes, Donna thinks as she strolls purposefully down Clerkenwell Road. She has fuck all idea where that might be but her feet seem to carry her toward the City which is as empty as it usually is on a Saturday afternoon. Donna realises she doesn’t particularly know how one goes about looking for rift energy without a hyper-sensitive Time Lord to serve as a convenient rift-energy sensor.  There must be _some_ way to tell. If only she’d occasionally paid attention to the Doctor’s endless lectures.

She’s lost in thought when someone literally walks straight into her.

“Oi, watch it!” she shrieks and then she realises she recognises the untidy chestnut hair. Immediately, her irritation vanishes.

“Doctor!” she yells, and flings her arms around his neck. “Thank god! I’m not staying behind in the TARDIS. I can’t bear it. I know you think it’s too dangerous but I can _help_ you–”

“Er,” he says, disentangling her arms from around his shoulders. “Why are you hugging me?” His voice is not quite unkind but he sounds a little disgruntled.

“Why am I – what the hell are you on about?”

She steps back suddenly and realises that he’s wearing his blue suit instead of his brown. His tie is brown with little blue roses on it. She wrinkles up her nose. “Did you change your suit?”

“Of course I didn’t,” he sneers dismissively. She hasn’t heard that tone of voice since the very first time she met him. She takes a step back, studying him carefully. Something isn’t quite right. Of course, this odd universe would have swallowed up her sweetly over-enthusiastic Doctor and spat out some stranger who can’t stand her presence.

The Doctor gives her a haughty look. “Right, if you don’t mind, I’ll be on my way.” He brushes past her and keeps striding down the pavement. Donna is stunned for half a second and then scurries after him.

“But… what?! You can’t just leave! Doctor, wait! We’ve got to figure out what’s happening!”

“Well, that’s a change from last time,” he remarks mildly, still striding away from her as she jogs to keep up with him. “I thought you never wanted to see me again and quite frankly, the feeling is mutual.”

Donna finally catches up with him and grabs his arm, spinning him around to face her. And all of the sudden, realisation hits her like a ton of bricks.

He’s not _her_ Doctor.

Which means the Doctor _does_ exist in this universe. Which means she might not be dead at all.

The Doctor is still staring at her impatiently.

”I’m sorry, I was looking for my friend,” she says. “I was mistaken. I’ll… I’ll let you go.”

It’s more troubling to her than she’d like to admit that there exists a universe where she and the Doctor aren’t best friends. Seeing his familiar brown eyes filled with disgust and disdain directed at her - even though he’s not _her_ Doctor - unnerves her and makes her heart clench painfully. She starts to walk away, angrily wiping at a couple of errant tears. How silly to cry over someone who doesn’t know her.

Then something he’d said suddenly sticks out in her mind. She turns on her heel.

“Did you say ‘a change from last time’?” she asks.

He halts where he’s retreating and gives her a withering look over his shoulder. “Well you weren’t exactly keen on staying in touch the last time we met, were you?”

“Wasn’t I?”

The other Doctor gives her an incredulous look and turns to keep walking up the street. She rushes toward him, grabbing him by the hand.

“How did we meet?” she asks.

“You’re kidding.”

“Humour me.”

She lets go of his hand, nodding in the direction of the river. He sighs, rolls his eyes, and follows her.

* * *

For a while they sit beside each other in silence. She’s keen to observe this universe, to understand the little differences and how they fit together. So far, besides the shockingly blue buses, it all looks the same. The sound of a boat motor drowns out the cry of the seagulls. Tourists meander up and down and the footpath. The Thames gurgles, brown and sluggish, many feet below them. All seems familiar. Except _him._

“You’re not from here.”

He interrupts her out of her reverie and she nearly jumps on the sound of his voice.

“How can you tell?” she asks.

“Your smell.”

Donna’s about to lash out but then she realises he’s said it about as guilelessly as he could have done. Just an observation, she realises. Not meant to insult. He looks interested now that he’s distinguished her from the Donna he knows.

“You’re from a different universe,” he states. It’s not a question. This Doctor is more subdued, she thinks. Less bouncy. Even at his darkest moments, her Doctor exudes a sort of manic energy. This Doctor seems almost dispassionate and when she turns to look at him, she’s startled at the flat, coldness of his dark eyes. The longer she sits with him, the less he resembles the man (alien) she knows.

“Who am I to you there?” he asks.

“You saved me,” she says, squinting at the river instead of meeting his eye. “In a lot of ways. And I returned the favour a few times. I travel with you. In the TARDIS. We’re… mates. Really good mates, you ‘n’ me. Best mates.”

“Best mates,” he repeats. “Huh.”

He finally looks at her and she looks at him and a little fission of _something_ buzzes in her stomach. So bizarre to be looking into the eyes of a stranger on the face of her best friend.

“We’ve met here?” she asks. “In this world?”

“Yeah,” he breathes. “You hate me.”

She snorts. “Right.”

“No you–” his eyes go dark and wide, and he puffs out a tense laugh, “–you _really, really_ hate me.”

“I can’t imagine…. Well I s’pose I can… I did sort of hate you, when I met you at first. Y’know, in my world. But you grew on me.”

He looks a little smug at that. “Oh don’t look like that,” she warns. “I still keep you in line.” At least that’s just the same. Arrogant prat in this universe and any universe. He laughs lightly and his eyes warm.

They’re silent for a moment, listening to the Thames lap gently at the shore as a boat passes by.

“So who are we here?” she asks. “How did we meet?”

He doesn’t answer for a moment, squinting at the south bank. He heaves another sigh. He’s world weary, she realises. Her Doctor is too, but this Doctor doesn’t seem to be trying to hide it behind manic energy.

What she doesn’t expect him to say is: “Nerys.”

“What?!”

“Nerys. We met at Nerys’s wedding. The TARDIS pulled her in –”

“Huon particles,” Donna supplies, faintly. _Nerys_?!

“Yeah. Well I s’pose you know the story. Her fiancé was poisoning her.”

“So you travel with _Nerys?”_ Donna asks, incredulously.

He goes from chuckling lightly at her disbelief to complete solemnity in the blink of an eye. “No we… I don’t travel with Nerys.”

“But if Nerys took my place… if Nerys was getting married. Then it would have been her, wouldn’t it? She would have helped you. She might have come with you!” Donna can hear herself getting overexcited again but she can’t stop. “I can’t believe it’s Nerys and not me! As if she hasn’t already got everything I haven’t. Oh when I get back I’m going to _kill_ her–”

“I lost her,” the Doctor interrupts, flatly. “Both of them. The Racnoss killed them.”  

Donna’s mouth closes with a click. Her head is whirling with different emotions. Jealousy at the prospect of the Nerys taking her place in the TARDIS is instantly extinguished. She and Nerys have a contentious friendship at the best of times. But she’d never want _this_.

“You found me,” he says. “I don’t know what it’s like in your universe but here you were like a dog with a bone… followed us as soon as we left the reception. You were livid. Blamed me for all of it, even the Racnoss. I don’t think you’d ever forgive me for killing your oldest friend.”

“You didn’t kill her,” Donna says. It’s not what she’d meant to say. It’s not what she’d hoped to say. But she can’t take his dejected tone. “It wasn’t your fault.”

The Doctor snorts, without humour. “Well that’s a change.” Donna grimaces.

“Since then, I’ve been alone. It’s too dangerous to have someone with me. I just hurt people. I hurt people and they end up dead. Or lost. That’s what I do.” He looks resigned as he impassively studies the horizon.

She lays her hand over his so that he meets her gaze suddenly. “Look, Doctor. I can’t really apologise for the other me. I know I’m too quick to judge sometimes. But I know I was probably hurting and without the whole story, well… I know I probably assumed the worst. But you have to know in your hearts: it wasn’t your fault. It never is. We do the best we can. It’s… it’s a funny old life on the TARDIS.”

He stares at her for a long moment, eyes darting between her earnest expression and her hand over his. He looks deeply wary of her kindness, like he’s expecting her to lash out at any moment. Other Donna must have really done a number on him.

“And you need someone, Doctor,” she says gently. “Someone to stop you.”

“You’re my best mate, you say?” he asks.  She nods, curiously.

He smiles wanly, and twines his fingers through hers where her hand still covers his. “Yeah, I reckon I can see it.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is the plural of quay quays? The world may never know.

Donna and the Other Doctor (because that’s how she thinks of him in her head, with a capital ‘O’) sit  and they talk for a while. She’s adept as ever at filling silence with friendly chatter and even this more subdued Doctor gives her gob a run for its money as he begins to relax in her presence. Donna tells him about how she’d met her Doctor. He’s an excellent audience - he gasps and hisses appreciatively - even though he’s experienced the story once already and it’d all gone horribly wrong for him. In exchange, he tells her about Rose and his eyes go soft and mournful. It’s fresher for him, she realises. The hurt. The guilt. It’s all simmering just beneath the surface so it’s too easy to make a careless comment that sends him spiraling back inside himself. 

Maybe she  _ had _ done him some good.

She inquires about Martha. He says he doesn’t know anyone called Martha. 

“You’re telling me you’ve been knocking around 904 years and not met a single Martha?” she ribs him gently, pretending the omission doesn’t perturb her. “Memory starts to go after a millennium, does it?” 

When he laughs, genuinely throws back his head and guffaws, for a moment he looks surprised and delighted that the sound has come from him. “But you’re  _ brilliant _ ,” he says, a note of wonder in his voice. 

She rolls her eyes. “Oh, don’t you start as well.” 

* * *

 

It’s been an hour, 3 minutes, and 47 seconds since the Doctor left the TARDIS and he’s no closer to determining what had sent them catapulting across universes than he’d been an hour, 3 minutes, and 47 seconds ago. No whisper of rift energy. Not even any suspicious flickering lights or mysterious figure shrouded in fog in the distance. This universe seems utterly normal.  Absolutely infuriating.

Only one thing for it, he decides. He’ll head to Torchwood. It’s almost assured that they’re doing something (well, two things, or maybe as many as several things) stupid and provocative and if nothing else, it’ll give him a bit of entertainment until he can figure out the real reason he’s here. 

He retraces his steps, heading back toward the TARDIS. He can feel the TARDIS in his mind, gently calling to him. It worries him that she sounds weaker than usual. But there’s also a note of anxiety in the TARDIS’s song. Attributable to the situation, he hopes, and nothing to do with Donna. He’s nearly as worried about Donna as he is the TARDIS. It’s not like her to acquiesce to instructions to stay put so easily. She’d looked genuinely taken aback at his desperation but he’s not sure it’s enough to keep her in one place. And he simply cannot have her slipping through the cracks between the universes. 

He’s kicking himself for not just bringing her with him - because at least then he could keep track of her though Rassilon knows she’d glare him into his next regeneration if she heard him thinking like this - when he finally reaches the TARDIS. He fits the key neatly into the slot and the door swings open. 

“Donna?” he calls. There’s no answer, just the sluggish whirring of the central column. 

His voice echoes back at him. No problem. She might be anywhere. He heads down one of the corridors off the console room that heads toward her bedroom and calls her name again. 

There’s still no answer and he unsuccessfully schools himself to remain calm. 

_ She could be… having a bath _ , he thinks to himself desperately. He can feel his vision clouding at the edges, his senses dulled by panic. He shakes away the haze. No purpose in losing his head. Maybe she’ll be headed toward Canary Wharf as well. She’s clever like that, his Donna. She’ll have her wits about her.

With his mind made up, he throws a lever, and the TARDIS takes off, shuddering, heaving, sounding sickly as ever. “Come on Old Girl _,_ ” he mutters. “You can do it. We can make it.”

For a moment, it seems as if she’s managed to take flight and then there’s a dull thud and the sound of something crunching, and the central column goes completely dark.

“Right,” the Doctor says, aloud. His voice echoes in the ringing silence of the TARDIS, completely devoid of its usual hum. “That’s… not good.” 

He probes the back of his mind for the connection he shares with the TARDIS and she’s still there, just barely. The usually comforting song has dulled to a raspy whisper. He knows she’s in no fit condition to travel and he curses himself for even trying. 

He sighs. Doomed to public transportation after all.

* * *

 

_ Why don’t we do this more often?  _ The Doctor thinks, with utter glee, sat in the front of the DLR. London whips by on either side, glimpses of quays glittering beneath the train as it bounces toward Canary Wharf. Donna calls him a trainspotter. At this moment, he’s at peace with the epithet.  He’s almost completely forgotten that he’s meant to be searching for Important and Suspicious Things, he’s so thrilled with the journey. 

Almost forgotten, that is, until two middle aged men sitting opposite stand with identical movements, shoving their hands in their pockets and rising. They’re dressed the same too, wearing khaki shorts and matching tie-dye tee-shirts with a slogan he can’t read from a distance on the breast pocket. 

The Doctor is immediately on edge. His mind races through a list of potential species that would exhibit such behavior. Sha’aras can split themselves into two separate organisms, and move in such synchrony but they haven’t been spotted off their homeworld in several centuries. Or perhaps they  _ are  _ two organisms, guided by a hive mind. They smell human enough, but the Doctor knows how advanced alien cloaking mechanisms can be. Perhaps they have something to do with the gap between universes that allowed the Doctor and Donna to slip through. Perhaps…

The Doctor doesn’t hesitate a second longer. He brandishes his sonic screwdriver and leaps toward them, grabbing one by the arm. He half expects the man to melt into goo in his hands as he directs the whirring blue light into the space between them. If he can find the resonance frequency of their shielding device...

“Hey!” one of them yells, wrenching his arm from his grip. “What the hell are you doing?” He’s American, the Doctor realises. Very tricky. Clever, clever aliens. 

“What am  _ I  _ doing?” the Doctor exclaims triumphantly. “What are  _ you _ doing? This is a level five planet. I don’t know what you’re planning and I don’t know who your boss is but I’m the Doctor, I’m a Time Lord, and I’m going to stop–”

“A level five Time  _ what?!  _ Jesus Christ. Come on, Stan, he’s just nuts. And the lady at the hotel said this was a decent area...”

The portlier of the two men disentangles the one called Stan from the Doctor’s grip and edges toward the door so that they might escape as quickly as possible when they reach the platform. 

“Did you say the lady at the hotel?” the Doctor asks. 

“Yeah! She said we should go visit Greenwich market but we didn’t come to London to be accosted on the train by some half-witted–” 

“Hang on… you’re... tourists.”

“No shit!” one says. “And if you’re going to be mugging us just get on with it already!” says the reedier one.

“Right so you’re… dressed the same… because…” 

“We’re part of a tour group!” the not-Stan one exclaims, exasperated. “I’m going to write a  _ scathing  _ Yelp review…” 

“Right,” breathes the Doctor. “Er – sorry about that. Thought you were someone else of the slightly more… destruction-of-the-planet variety. Forget I said anything. In fact forget you even saw me!” The Doctor gives a feeble little laugh that does little to convince Stan and not-Stan of his sanity. 

He’s still laughing nervously when the doors open and the two men all but sprint from the train. 

Admittedly not his best work.

* * *

 

Eventually, the Doctor makes it to Torchwood without accosting any other tourists. He half expects blaring alarms or some kind of red alert. Surely,  _ something  _ must be amiss. There has to be some strange energy reading or something spat out of the rift that ought not to be there. 

Instead, he’s greeted in the foyer by a thoroughly jovial looking Jack. 

“Doctor!” he exclaims. “What a nice surprise! Knew our Time Lord-y sensors would pick up something tasty some time.” He gives the Doctor a lascivious wink. Jack, in any universe, is an unabashed flirt. It’s comforting, really.  

Jack leads the Doctor to the lifts and up to an airy corner office on the 16th floor. There’s a comfortable armchair and a vast desk of dark oak, but hardly any other furniture mars the view out over Canary Wharf offered by the floor-to-ceiling windows. It’s all markedly different from the cluttered underground lair that makes up the Torchwood branch in Cardiff. Jack sits in the winged chair, puts his feet up on the desk and gestures for the Doctor to sit opposite. 

“Quite an office,” the Doctor comments mildly.

“Well, the dank mechanical grotto look was starting to feel passé,” Jack says airily with a wave of his hand. “It was time for a change. Couldn’t really remember what was keeping me in Cardiff.”

Momentarily, the Doctor sees a glimpse of a shadow pass over the ageless blue eyes. But it’s dispelled in half a second, displaced by the customary broad grin. Somehow Jack manages to show every one of his straight, white teeth. “So what brings you here?” 

“Well that’s just the thing. Absolutely nothing,” the Doctor says, frowning. “Which is why I have to ask. Has anything odd been happening? Anything out of the ordinary? Any strange readings or unexplained disappearances or unlikely news stories?”

Jack’s grin fades a little, his brow wrinkling as if he’s trying to recall something difficult. “Nothing,” he says after a little while. “Absolutely nothing at all.” 


	4. Chapter 4

Donna has decided she quite likes this universe. 

If it weren’t for the obviously nefarious reasons for their presence in it and their inability to leave it, she’d be inclined to think about it as a nice little holiday with a Doctor who - after overcoming his initial dislike of her - seems to worship every word that comes out of her mouth. At first she thinks he’s taking the piss. Then she realises he’s being completely genuine. It’s like he’s seen a new slice of humanity each time she says something silly and he beams at her. Eventually she realises it’s because _ he is. _ This Doctor is impossibly fresh, his hearts are still flayed and raw from his losses. They talk for nearly two hours and the entire time she fights the impulse to throw her arms around him and hug him very hard. 

But before her resolve can crumble, he’s leapt up from the bench they’re sat on and grasped her by the hand and that feels as familiar as anything. 

“Right!” he says brightly. “Best be off. Universe in mortal danger to save!” 

He says it loudly enough that a woman walking a dog within earshot gives him an alarmed look. Donna raises an eyebrow and he demures. “Well… I assume there’s a universe in mortal danger to save. Could be any number of things…”

She rolls her eyes and notices the dog walker has disappeared. Donna doesn’t blame her one bit.

They stroll east along the river, hand-in-hand and the Doctor does that infuriating thing where he mumbles under his breath wildly without explaining a single thing he’s saying so she hears little snippets of chatter like “antimatter particle trace” and “multi-spatial gearbox”. At least he’s anchored to her side as she suspects if he were able to he’d be dancing nervous little circles around her. Donna tolerates five solid minutes of this nonsense and then decides enough is enough. Clearly Rose just let him prattle on. Probably just liked the sound of his voice.

Donna doesn’t miss being young and lovesick one bit.  

She yanks him to a halt. “Oi, Spaceman,” she huffs. “Care to share in English?” 

He flashes her a grin. “There’s nothing wrong,” he says.

Donna snorts. “Yeah, like that’s ever true.”

“No really,” he says earnestly, grasping her by both hands. “There’s really  _ nothing  _ wrong. Your Doctor had it right–”

“He’s not  _ my  _ Doctor,” Donna protests, aware she’s been referring to him as such in her head the entire morning. 

The Doctor sighs. “Your  _ universe’s _ Doctor,” he concedes. “Don’t you see how clever it is? Clearly something  _ is  _ wrong because otherwise you wouldn’t be here - not that I mind you being here, don’t get me wrong - but there must have been something to drag you through the vortex and into this universe. But something’s been very clever. Very clever indeed. They’re erasing their tracks. Making it impossible to detect the wrinkle in the universes that is letting things through.” 

“So what do we do?” Donna asks.

“I have no idea,” the Doctor says, his face splitting into a mad grin. “I genuinely have no idea! Isn’t that brilliant?”

“Just peachy,” Donna says flatly.

The Doctor hasn’t heard. “Time Lord brain, a millennium of traveling, and infinite knowledge of timelines and the universe and I haven’t got a clue! It must be something very sophisticated. There must be some trace _... _ ” 

Donna sighs, watches a boat disappear over the horizon. “So if you haven’t got any ideas, aren’t we sort of… stuck?” 

She’s not prepared for the little tremor that suddenly chokes her voice. Until now, she hadn’t really thought of the consequences of being stuck in a universe that’s not her own. A Donna Noble already exists here though. A Donna Noble who temps and lives with her mum and Gramps and fills the Donna Noble-shaped hole in this universe. There’s no room for another one. She’d have to go far away from everything she knows and loves and make a life for herself with nothing and no one.

Or maybe she could travel with this Doctor. Maybe they could make a life together. Maybe she could help him heal a bit. They’d both be rootless, then. 

The Doctor deflates a little and then fixes her with a look so intense she feels her breath catch in her throat. “I will get you home, Donna Noble,” he says, his voice low. “I promise.”

For a moment she’s trapped in his gaze. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, being here, with him. 

And then something catches her eye. 

“Hold on a mo’,” she says, letting go of his hands. “Did that bee just… blink in and out of existence?” 

“What?!” exclaims the Doctor, whirling around. 

“No I swear, it did. I saw it. It’s massive so I noticed it flying just then and then it was gone and then it was just… back again.” 

“Donna, you… you…” the Doctor seems at a loss for words and then completely without warning he wraps his arms around her and picks her up clear off the ground. 

“Get off me!” she shrieks, laughing and squirming.

“You  _ beauty _ !” he declares, putting her down finally, and Donna’s not sure if he’s referring to her or to the bumble bee that he’s now pursuing so intensely he looks like a dog chasing after a tennis ball. He whips out his sonic screwdriver and points it at the bee and it drops from the air, suddenly.

“You didn’t kill it!” 

“Nah, just stunned,” the Doctor says, plucking the bee off the ground and holding it out in his palm to show her. She makes a face. “Oh go on,” he says. “It’s harmless! We owe a lot to bees.” 

The Doctor scans the bee again with his sonic screwdriver and scrutinises the reading. “Well I was right,” he murmurs. “They certainly are  _ sneaky.  _ Barely a trace of any wonky energy readings–” 

“The boat!” Donna exclaims. 

The Doctor looks up startled. “The what?”

“The boat! I saw the boat disappear too. And the woman walking her dog! This whole time I’ve been seeing things just… disappear. And I hadn’t even noticed! I just thought they’d sort of… you know… fucked right off...” 

The Doctor’s look of surprise is gradually dissolving into something that looks a little too close to awe for Donna’s comfort. “Oh, don’t–” she begins.

“Donna Noble,” he breathes. “You are… completely brilliant. I hope he tells you that at least four times a day. Eight times a day. Constantly. However much, it’s not enough.” 

Much to her chagrin, Donna feels herself blushing. “I didn’t even notice I’d been noticing until now – oh, stop it. Don’t look like that. I’m not… I’m nothing special. I’m just Donna. I can’t change a plug. I can’t keep a job. Apparently I can’t even properly keep an eye on the other you which is the only thing I seem to be half decent at–” 

She cuts off because his gaze is suddenly thunderous. 

“I don’t know who taught you to think about yourself as if you’re not good enough or not smart enough or not  _ anything  _ enough but it’s a good thing they’re in that universe and I’m in this one because–” a muscle leaps dangerously in his jaw, “I would have to put a stop to it.” 

Donna feels a shiver work itself down her spine even though she knows his anger isn’t directed at her. It’s only then that she realises how much rage simmers beneath the surface of this Doctor. She’s seen her Doctor angry and she’s even made him angry, she knows. But her Doctor burns bright and hot and is then quickly extinguished. She lets him stew and then they talk and they adventure and nothing lasts long. This Doctor, though, has the abyss only just concealed behind his eyes. This Doctor smoulders. This is the Doctor who brought down Gallifrey. 

She shudders again and she thinks he sees fear flicker across her face because he instantly softens and looks stricken. “I’m sorry,” he says quietly. His eyes still burn. 

She doesn’t respond, just takes his hand. “Let’s go catch ourselves some aliens,” she says. 

* * *

 The Jack of this universe seems similar enough to his other-universe counterpart, the Doctor decides. This Jack hits on him no less than 37 times and then also attempts to chat up the receptionist when she comes in to tell him that the rift in Cardiff has spat out yet another weevil. 

“Honestly, Jack. You’re practically married now. What would Ianto say?” he asks, the 38th time. 

Instead of something cheeky, Jack’s handsome face wrinkles. “What did you say?” 

“Ianto,” the Doctor says. “Y’know your… companion.” 

“How do you know about Ianto?”

“How do I–  _ what _ ?” 

“I dream about someone called Ianto,” Jack says. “A Welsh guy. Seriously fit.” He grins but almost instantly it fades. “But he doesn’t exist.” 

* * *

“So how are we going to figure out where the bee went?”

The Doctor stops walking and looks a little sheepish.

“Oh no….” Donna groans. 

“Oh yes!” the Doctor exclaims. “We’re going to make ourselves into bait!” 

Donna sighs. For once in her life, if she could avoid being bloody  _ bait.  _

“Whatever we’re dealing with clearly has some preferences which is why the bee got spat out and rejected. So we just have to make ourselves look nice and delicious.” 

The Doctor is rigging something together out of a bit of twine and some miscellaneous circuits he’d found in his pocket. It looks awfully questionable. 

“We aren’t already tasty?” she asks, mostly to take her mind off the fact that their fate lies in the hands of a device that has been emitting little sparks and causing the Doctor to mutter musical-sounding Gallifreyan curses under his breath every few minutes. 

“I think it’s probably something to do with the temporal energy,” the Doctor explains, his voice muffled by the bit of wire he’s holding between his teeth as he twists together two other metal clasps. “We’ve got it all over us. Side effect of time travel. Whatever this creature is, it doesn’t seem to like complex events in space and time.” 

“So we’re going to make ourselves… not complex events in space and time?” 

“Well, we can’t really do that. What we are going to do is make ourselves look very tasty to any creature that is looking to harvest rift energy. Which is what we’re dealing with. Or, what I think we’re dealing with. In all honestly it’s a hunch, but my hunches do tend to be rather good.“ He gives her a smug grin she can’t help but return and holds the device over their heads. 

Hold on tight now,” he says, and grasps her hand. “This might hurt a bit. I don’t know how long it will take them.” 

It’s almost instantaneous.

Donna feels something like a tug in her chest and then it feels like she’s being assaulted on all sides with light and electricity. She feels the hair on her arms stick straight up and then her vision whites out and all she can feel is heat and pain and somehow, the Doctor’s hand still in hers. 

And then just as suddenly, it stops. 

“All right?” he asks. He looks a little worse for the wear and his tie has a hole singed in it. 

She tries to say, “fine, yeah,” but it comes out as a croak. 

“Humans aren’t meant to travel through the vortex without protection,” he says. “Here, sit for a minute. I reckon they’ll be with us soon.” He fishes a bottle of water out of his impossible pocket and offers it to her. She accepts gratefully. 

Donna takes a moment to breathe and take in their surroundings. They’re in what looks startlingly like the foyer of a slightly shoddy office except there are no doors or windows leading from the room. One of the fluorescent lights flickers sickeningly and there’s no one at reception. 

“Unprofessional,” Donna comments mildly, gesturing at the empty seat behind the desk. The Doctor laughs lightly and she grins and then winces at the pain in her ribs. 

Naturally, the Doctor can’t sit still for long. He jumps to his feet and then just as abruptly squats to the floor, scanning random bits of cheap linoleum tiling with his screwdriver. Donna watches him bemusedly and tries not to let the flickering of the light fan the frisson of apprehension at the pit of her stomach. Her head aches something fierce and she can feel her vision clouding at the edges. Then a thought occurs to her.

“Doctor…” she begins.

He looks up from where he’s been inspecting what appears to be some sort of mould, his finger suspended halfway to his mouth. 

She wrinkles up her nose. “Oh for goodness sake… didn’t your mother tell you not to eat off the floor?” 

“She might have round about my 90th birthday but I was just a kid then. Barely out of nappies.” The Doctor gives her a crooked smile and returns to thoughtfully inspecting the mould. 

It’s another minute before she realises she meant to tell him something. 

“Doctor… you said it’s the temporal energy that was keeping us from being captured, right?”

“Mmm,” he murmurs distractedly.

“So if the bee got spat out… does that mean it also has traces of temporal energy on it? Like could it have come in through the rift as well?” 

The Doctor shoots bolt upright and Donna jumps a little. “Oh! Oh! I am thick! Thick, thick, thickety thick!” 

“Okay then,” Donna says. 

“Something is plucking things out of this universe and displacing them in time and using the energy for something. A bit like Weeping Angels but… quieter… less, y’know, horrifying. And they’re using a tear in space and time to do it. But pop in a complex event like say… an accidental time traveling bee or an not-so-accidental time traveling human and the rift closes right up. Stops devouring everything in it’s path. It’s... satiated. Sort of. More or less. Well, not really, but best not think about it.” 

“Right,” says Donna, not getting it. 

“That explains why the bee got spat out and why it wasn't interested in us before we obscured the effects of the energy. The question is, of course, whether they’ve made the rift, or if they’ve just stumbled upon one in this universe and they’re opportunistic. We’ve got a bit of a problem if they’re going around tearing apart the fabric of reality just to harvest potential energy.”

“That sounds bad,” Donna supplies helpfully. 

“Yes. Yes it is… rather bad,” the Doctor responds wryly. “The question is… how are they hiding it from us? I can’t even sense it and I can sense almost every–” 

He’s stopped talking abruptly because a holograph of a smartly-dressed woman has materialised before him. 

“Welcome to Starsax Energy Plant,” she says calmly. “You will be submitted for processing shortly. Please enjoy your stay here and kindly do not struggle.” 


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the long delay! Moved & started a new internship for the summer so it's been a very busy month. I was hoping to get out a longer chapter to make up for it but instead I'll post this and then hopefully post the next bit by the end of the week.

Naturally, they end up in a prison cell. After pointedly ignoring the holographic woman’s instructions not to struggle, two guards rough them up a bit and dump them unceremoniously into the dank room. Donna’s head is pounding from a sharp blow to her forehead.

They’re tied together by the wrists with their hands behind their backs, back-to-back so all they can manage is a sort of crab-legged shuffle back and forth across the cell, until Donna elbows the Doctor none-too-gently in the ribs and tells him to _sit still for the love of god because she’s going to be sick with all the jostling._

“Right, ah– we should attend to that. Soon.” He gestures their joined wrists in the general direction of her head. “You’re bleeding,” he says evenly.

“Brilliant,” Donna retorts faintly. “I’ve sprung a leak.”

“Looks worse than it is,” he reassures her. “Well… probably. I hope.”

“Fantastic.”

Donna lets out a shaky sigh.

“Here,” he says. “Lean against me.”

“Haven't really got a choice, have I?” she grumbles, but gratefully she slumps backward, laying her head back against his shoulder. She pinches her eyes closed, feeling the pounding in her head abate a little bit.

“So now what?” Donna asks.

“We escape. And then we save everything,” the Doctor answers. “Preferably before you black out.”

“Am I liable to do that soon?”

The Doctor shrugs. “Hopefully not.”

“So any ideas about how we escape?” she asks.

“None whatsoever,” he says cheerfully. “You?”

“Haven’t a clue.”

“Right,” the Doctor says. She can feel him vibrating and she knows he wants to start pacing. He lurches suddenly, remembers they’re tied together and trips forward before he catches himself. “Right,” he says again, apparently for the lack of anything else to say. “Can you reach in my trouser pocket?”

“Look mate, I don’t know what kind of arrangement you had with Rose but I’m not having any of that–”

“For my sonic screwdriver,” he says quickly. “I can’t reach from this angle but you might be able to.”

Donna laughs and squirms around until one of her hands are within swiping distance of his pockets. Trying not to think about prodding any sensitive areas, she manages to get two fingers inside and around the screwdriver. She yanks as best she can and the screwdriver flips from his pocket, landing on the floor of the cell with a clatter.

Together, they bend over awkwardly, the Doctor half turned so that he can grab the screwdriver. “Aha!” he exclaims triumphantly. “Now we’re in business!”

The screwdriver whirs and Donna’s wrists spring free and a moment later the Doctor is free as well. She stretches her aching muscles. Getting constantly tossed in dungeons is utter hell on her joints though she does prefer the ropes to manacles.

Another blue light and the door to the cell springs open. The Doctor grabs Donna’s hand and they head off down the corridor.

They pass cell after cell, some empty, some with occupants slumped against the wall and the temperature drops sharply as they proceed. It seems to go on for ages, damp, and dark and doing nothing to alleviate the sense of forboding at the pit of Donna's stomach. Finally, the corridor ends and they step across the threshold of a room so vast and gleaming it makes Donna squint at the brightness of it. In the center is a brilliant white light, zig-zagged shaped and pulsating with jagged edges that make it look as if someone tore the very air apart.

Workers dressed head to toe in white plastic suits surround the light. They’re passing odd-shaped packages into it, some tiny enough to fit in the palm of her hand and some so large they take 10 or 20 workers using odd cranes to lift. When something crosses the plane of the light it gleams brightly for a second and Donna swears she can hear sounds from beyond it. And then nothingness.

“What the hell is this place?” Donna asks, shielding her eyes against the brightness.

“It’s an energy plant,” the Doctor breathes. “Just like they said.”

His eyes have gone wide and dark and he looks paralysed as he watches the pulsating light. Donna feels her palms go sweaty and she squeezes his hand.

“You there!” a voice calls. A uniformed worker approaches them. His badge reads ‘Shift Supervisor’ in smart lettering. “Do you have clearance to be here?”

The Doctor seems to startle out of a trance. Quick as a wink he reaches into his jacket pocket and pulls out the psychic paper, flashing it confidently. “Power plant inspector,” he says. “Here to inspect the… er… power plants.”

Donna rolls her eyes.

“This is my–”

“–boss,” Donna supplies, smiling sweetly. She offers her hand. “Jane Smith. Pleasure.”

The Doctor scowls at her.

The supervisor scrutinises the paper suspiciously and then appears to accept it. “Seems in order,” he says briskly. “Anything in particular you’d like to see?”

“Oh we’ll just observe from afar,” the Doctor says pleasantly. “So what corporation is this?”

“Starsax. The largest energy producer in this galactic sector.”

“What sort of energy?”

The supervisor looks even more suspicious at this. “You say you’re a power plant inspector?”

“Just answer the question,” Donna says flatly.

“Temporal energy, of course. It can be converted to run almost _anything._ ”

“Right, well thank you for your time,” the Doctor says. “You can just… run along.”

Donna snorts and the supervisor gives them another odd look, but thankfully departs. “‘Power plant inspector’? _Really_? That’s not even a proper job.”

“Back this way,” he says, his voice urgent. “Quickly. Come on.”

They duck through the doorway and down the corridor. “In here,” the Doctor mutters, sonicking another door open. It’s a broom cupboard.

“Running away and hiding,” Donna laughs. “I like it. Why don’t we do this all the time?”

The Doctor ignores her, his gaze intense.  “Do you know what that was, Donna?”

“Well… no… that’s sort of your department–”

“It’s a hole, Donna. A tear in the very fabric of reality. A window through space and time.”

“So there are… other places through there?” she breathes.

“Other places. Other times. Other universes. I reckon it’s how you were able to get here. It’s weakening the walls between the universes. It’s incredibly unstable, to create a tear like that. Sometimes an implosion powerful enough can fling cracks throughout reality. But I think… judging by the way it’s kept, they’ve created it themselves. Whoever _they_ are. They’ve torn reality apart to produce energy.”

Donna’s mouth is completely dry. She thinks of the prisoners slumped in their cells and feels her stomach sour. “And what are they putting in it?”

“People. Animals. Anything. Experiences, really. They’re harvesting the potential energy released when an organism is displaced in time. I was right. It’s like the Weeping Angels have gone corporate.” He gives a dry, humourless laugh that sends a shiver down Donna’s spine. “A tear like that isn’t satiated for long, though. It spreads. You can see already the jagged edges where the crack has grown, where it’s consumed beyond its reach. They’ll lose control of it. It will devour this universe.”

“Unless?”

“You know what I said earlier? About how an event in space and time complex enough would seal it?”

“Yeah…”

“Well... I’m a complex event in space and time.”

The Doctor looks at her meaningfully and suddenly she wants to wring his skinny neck.  

“No,” Donna states, flatly. “No. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Of all the stupid, reckless, heroic things you’ve done you will _not_ fling yourself into a massive gaping hole in reality, you stupid, stupid Martian–”

“I’m not–”

“–and if you think for just one second that I would stand idly by and watch you make the most idiotic decision of your stupidly long life–”

“–from Mars.”

“–you are _sorely_ mistaken.” Donna lets out a huffy breath. “I’m not losing you.”

“You’ve got another me out there looking for you!”

“I’m _not_ losing you!”

Much to her chagrin her voice breaks and she can’t help it. She flings her arms around him. She feels him hesitate and then he hugs her just as tightly, his breathing shaky.

“They need you here,” she whimpers. “There can’t be a universe without you.”

“There are billions of universes without me,” he says.

“Well, sod them,” she bites out fiercely. “This one’s got you and it’ll keep you.”

She releases him, and they gaze at each other long and hard. His eyes are so tender it makes her throat tight.

Just as suddenly, the charged moment has passed and Donna sinks down the wall of the cupboard. He sits beside her and heaves a sigh.

“Your forehead,” he says. “It’s still bleeding. Hold still.”

Donna watches bemusedly as he pulls gauze and antiseptic from his jacket pocket. “You’re ridiculous, you are,” she breathes.

His lips quirk. “So I’ve been told.”

She studies his face and tries not to wince as he gently cleans her wound, his eyes faraway.

“I’ve made a mistake,” he says, after a little while.

“Oh?”

“I should have given her a chance. The other you. The you here. I wrote her off so quickly.”

She smiles wanly but doesn’t say anything.

“I should have known,” he says. “I should have known you were special.”

Donna leans her head against his shoulder and stares straight ahead so she can tell herself he can’t see her crying.


	6. Chapter 6

It’s been three more hours and the Doctor is no closer to finding his wayward companion, fending off Jack’s shameless flirting, or saving the universe. On the plus side, after a harrowing ride through the streets of London with Jack, they’d towed the TARDIS back to Torchwood and she was now sat in the corner, hooked up to a contraption and thankfully sounding a little less sickly. But there’s nothing to be done until she recharges. He trails along behind Jack, wracking his brains while Jack putters around doing the kind of administrative work the Doctor despises.

“Quiet here, today,” Jack comments mildly as he flicks through another thick binder. The Doctor sighs.

“There really haven’t been any flickering lights? Any fog that materialises in broad daylight? No unexplained disappearances?”

Jack shakes his head distractedly, tapping a pen against his chin. “No, but I suspect Linda from HR hasn’t been filling out her time cards properly…”

“Come on, _think_. Any strange people asking you to do things? Maybe they flicker in and out of view? Questionable subterranean floors that don’t show up on maps?” the Doctor implores. He’s grasping at straws and the inactivity is starting to get on his nerves.

“Well I s’pose I can give you the tour,” Jack offers. “You can see for yourself.”

The Doctor jumps at the chance to stretch his legs. “Brilliant!” he exclaims. “I’ll go get my machine that goes ding when there’s stuff!”

Torchwood is vast and glass-paneled, and must have once been a veritable gemstone in the crown of the brand new and shiny East End. But with Torchwood’s influence, it all looks a bit fake, like they’re on the set of a film that imagined how the future might look. It makes the hair on the Doctor’s arms stand up. Something is never quite right here.

As if to vindicate his unease, as they proceed toward the lower floors, the Doctor’s device that goes ding when there’s stuff is going simply _bonkers._ Even more oddly, the energy readings are familiar. They get stronger and stronger the lower they go.

“Jack are you absolutely sure there are no questionable subterranean floors that don’t show up on maps?”

“The lower ground floors we lease out to private companies. I don’t have access to some of them,” Jack explains, leading the Doctor down another long, windowless corridor, the type of which seems to make up the lower floors of the building.

“Lower ground floors with an ‘s’? But the lift only goes to one.”

“Stair access only for the lowest one,” Jack shrugs.

“Jack. _That is a questionable subterranean floor that doesn’t show up on a map_ ,” the Doctor groans.

Jack just laughs.

He leads the Doctor deeper into the bowels of Torchwood. The lowest floor is just as nondescript as the prior two floors, with smooth, expressionless, deep grey walls and flooring made out of some sort of grating. There are no windows but there are several doors situated on the opposite wall. The Doctor’s half-listening to Jack chattering away happily, focused on the vibrating device in his hands, until Jack mentions his wedding and something clicks in his brain.

“Your what?”

“My wedding. Well, I say wedding. It was really more of an orgy with a very strict dress code–”

“No, nevermind that,” the Doctor says with a shudder. “A wedding! That’s the last time I saw readings like this. Donna’s wedding! It’s huon energy Jack. Why are there still huon energy readings down here? It doesn’t make any sense.”

The Doctor whirls around wildly as the little device in his hands whirs and beeps. He follows the racket to a door with ‘NOT AN EXIT’ printed on it in large, red block letters.

“This is it,” he says. “This is the source of the energy readings.”

* * *

“We’ve got to get everyone out of here,” the other Doctor says. “We need time and space to think without looking suspicious.”

Donna looks around for a diversion and spots a fire alarm on the opposite wall. She doesn’t hesitate more than half a second. She breaks the glass and pulls the alarm.

Wailing sirens go off and the workers neatly exit the floor as a mechanical voice trills instruction over the cacophony.

“Fire alarm,” Donna yells, shrugging. “We needed a distraction.

The Doctor beams at her. “ _Brilliant_.”

Donna hops up onto one of the now abandoned desks while the Doctor begins stripping the wires that snake from a hole cut in the floor all the way to the light in the center of the room. “Don’t go near the light, Donna,” he warns her, and then he disappears out of sight down the hole. She can hear him crashing around and the whir of the screwdriver.

“What’s through the tear?” she calls to him.

His voice is muffled when he answers. “Hmm?”

“What happens to the packages that go into the light?” she yells louder.

His head pops out and he looks solemn. “The void, Donna. Nothingness.”

“So they… die?”

The Doctor looks pained, scrubbing the back of his neck with a hand. “In a manner of speaking. Anyway, I reckon they’re already dead when they go in.” He eyes one of the packages darkly and hoists himself out of the hole.

“Right,” he says. “I have an idea. But it’s not a great one.”

Suddenly, one of the doors reading ‘DO NOT ENTER’ off the room with the rift swings open.

And Donna’s Doctor steps through as casually as anything, as if she hasn’t been looking for him for half a day now, as if they’d planned to meet here and he was merely showing up for their appointment. Donna’s jaw drops.

“Doctor!” Donna exclaims and springs forward to hug him. He picks her up nearly clear off the ground and she shrieks and bats at him. “How the hell did you make it here?!”

“It’s underneath Torchwood,” the Doctor laughs incredulously. “And I thought I told you to stay put!”

“Yeah, yeah, you were taking too long,” she says. “And look who I found!”

She gestures behind her to the other Doctor, lurking slightly in the shadows and staring at his counterpart apprehensively. She feels as if she’s introducing a shy dog to a slightly overly rambunctious one.

“So you’re… me,” her Doctor says, eyeing the other Doctor up and down. “Nice suit.”

“Thanks.”

The other Doctor looks on the cusp of saying something but can’t quite manage it and Donna can only take the awkward silence for about thirty more seconds.

“Right, you two, we’ve got some figuring to do,” Donna says impatiently. “This Doctor reckons there’s a massive tear in reality they’ve created and they’re using to convert temporal energy into some sort of other energy form. And they’re kidnapping and chucking random people and animals and boats into it. It’s not great.”

“It’s Huon energy,” her Doctor says suddenly. “I was getting bizarre energy readings on the lower floors of Torchwood and I couldn’t figure out why it seemed familiar. But of course, it was Donna who helped me figure it out, even though she wasn’t there.”

“I’m just wonderful,” Donna interjects jokingly.

“You are,” both Doctors say in unison and she rolls her eyes.

“So are you thinking what I’m thinking?” the other Doctor asks her Doctor.

“Well, naturally,” says her Doctor.

“Quite right,” says the other Doctor. “One of us could pop into the tear and it would seal up.”  

“Absolutely out of the question,” Donna says flatly.

“Well then… I suppose we could try to rig up some sort of an engine. Something that will feed the huon energy that is produced back into the rift to keep it from spreading. It will be devilishly tricky to pull off… but if Donna seriously objects to one of us making permanent a trip to the void–”

“Which I do.”

“–then this might work in a pinch. We’ll give it a go, at least.”

Suddenly it’s a flurry of the Doctors planning, with wires being pulled from the walls and two screwdrivers alight, and it’s all Donna can do to keep out of the way. She hates this bit, where she watches impotently while the Doctor rigs something up out of a tea kettle and two bananas. But she’s happy to see the other Doctor so cheerfully tinkering away with his counterpart.

“Donna,” her Doctor calls. “Can you stand outside and make sure no one’s coming along?”

“I’m perfectly capable of helping,” Donna says, sharply. She crosses her arms over her chest and fixes them with a glare. The Doctors share a look.

“Of course,” her Doctor says slightly wearily. “But we really do need someone on the lookout.”

“So long as you know,” she says primly, and ducks outside.

____________________________________

 

“So what are the chances of this succeeding?” Donna’s Doctor asks after she’s left. Something fizzes and he curses under his breath and quickly extinguishes the spark that leaps up his shirt sleeve.

“Oh I’d say… about 1 in 40 million.”

“Oh brilliant. Love a nice... questionable… really _really_ rubbish plan,” he says gleefully.

“Well the other option is–” the other Doctor nods meaningfully toward the door where they know Donna stands guard, “–untenable.”

Donna’s Doctor shrugs.  

“You really think they’re converting temporal energy into huon energy? Seems an awful lot of work for very little yield,” the other Doctor says.

“I can’t think why else they’d be so secretive. It’s incredibly unstable but it is powerful,” Donna’s Doctor responds. “If we can rig this up correctly it can run itself for a long time. Might have to check up on it in, say, two thousand years. But until then it should work beautifully. And it’s well-hidden.

“Bloody Torchwood,” the other Doctor mutters under his breath, thinking of Jack’s irritating grin. “As if they haven’t given us enough trouble.”

“Oh give him a break,” Donna’s Doctor says. “He’s lost his entire life to this rift and he doesn’t even know it.”

They work in silence for a while. Sharing the same brain makes their work easy and fluid and the Doctor idly considers how cloning himself would make TARDIS repairs go faster but what if Donna liked the clone better? Potentially disastrous.

“Donna,” the other Doctor says, apropos of nothing.

“Sorry?”

“She’s… she’s...”

“Yeah,” the Doctor says, smiling gently. “She is.”

“We aren’t always so lucky with companions. I hope you appreciate her.”

The Doctor puffs out a laugh. “You aren’t giving me the protective-mum speech are you? ‘Take care of my daughter. Don’t hurt her.’ Come on. You know we do our best.”

The other Doctor laughs too but sobers quickly. “But really,” he says. “Take care of her.”

“She’s my best mate,” the Doctor says evenly.

For some reason the other Doctor looks dubious at this but Donna’s Doctor goes back to wiring before he can probe anymore.

 

* * *

 

Outside, Donna paces back and forth in front of the door and reflects on the plan so far. The Doctors said it was a long shot. The only way of halting the growth of the crack with any surety was to fling something big and complicated  - a time lord, or two, for example - in it. But she’s not having that. She’s pretty sure it’s in her job description to keep the Doctor from doing anything stupid and self-sacrificing and this counts as both.

But then, what about her?

The thought stops Donna in her tracks. As a human, she might be nothing compared to a Time Lord. But she has tendrils of the Doctor in her mind leftover from the metacrisis. She’s not as complex an event as a Time Lord but she reckons she’s complex enough.

The Doctor had said the void was on the other side of the tear. She’s not an expert in astrophysics but she strongly suspects whatever the “void” is, it’s not fun. But the universe doesn’t need Donna Noble. Meanwhile, the universe needs as many Doctors as it can get.

She goes back to pacing, transfixed by the gleam of the fluorescent lighting on the tile floor and the concept of her own mortality. What will it be like? Will she die? Will she still have a body? Will she float in nothingness? She thinks these thoughts impassively and then can’t help giggling at how casually she’s feeling about her impending doom. _L’appel du vide_. The call of the void. She’d never quite understood the phrase so personally or so literally before.

And then she realises she’s made up her mind. She halts.

“I am going to die,” she says, aloud. Her voice echoes eerily in the empty corridor and she feels another burble of hysterical laughter bubble out of her mouth. It doesn’t sound like her voice or her laugh.

She thinks of her mum and Gramps. So far away. So impossibly far away. They’ll never know.  They’ll worry desperately.

This thought - more than the thought of dying or drifting in blackness for eternity - upsets her. But the Doctor will tell her grandfather at least. He’ll know she died doing the sort of silly heroic thing she’s constantly chastising the Doctor for attempting to do. He’ll be proud of her. He’s always proud of her. But he’ll understand.

And the Doctor will move on. He always does.

The thought of _telling_ the Doctor, though… that thought makes her blood run cold.

She realises she’s crying in the same detached way she’d heard herself laughing. Her body already feels like it’s not entirely her own, like it’s straddling the beyond and isn’t quite under her control.

“No time like the present,” she says to herself and steers her uncooperative frame back through the door she’d come from.

The Doctors are talking in hushed tones stooped over a cluster of wiring so they don’t immediately notice her when she walks in. She takes the opportunity to dry her eyes and square her shoulders. She can do this. He decides to do foolish things like this everyday. It’s her turn.

“Doctors,” she begins.

“Donna!” her Doctor exclaims. “I’ve just got to pop down to the control room to do something clever. Back in a tick!”

“Doctor, wait, I’ve just got to–”

“Two seconds, Donna - hold that thought!”

He disappears down the corridor and Donna swallows hard. It’s better this way. The other Doctor doesn’t know her so well. Maybe he won’t put up so much of a fight. He has his own universe’s Donna to find after all.

“Doctor…” she starts.

He has a small metal pipe in his mouth so all he manages in a distracted grunt.

“Doctor,” she says again, and something about her tone makes his head snap up. He drops the metal piping with a clatter.

“Doctor I’m a complex event in space and time.”

“Donna, you’re just a–”

“No, listen. I have a bit of you in me. It’s complicated. Far too complex to explain right now. And a story that deserves a good telling.” She smiles wryly, but her eyes are sad. “But it’s enough that…. I’ll be enough. I can save us.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” the Doctor says dismissively and turns back to his work, his brow thunderous.

Donna reaches for him, gently turns his face toward hers.  “Doctor I can’t let either of you sacrifice yourselves. You’re too important. I’m just… you were going to say it… I’m just a human being. I’m replaceable. There’s seven billion of me. You? You’ve got to stick around.”

She sees tears gathering in his eyes, his mouth ajar. He wrings his head like a child.

“No,” he says. “Please no.”

“This universe needs you,” she tells him. She grips his hands in both of hers and he squeezes her palms so tightly her fingers go numb.

“You realise what will happen,” he says darkly. “You won’t just be gone. You won’t have ever existed. I’ll… I’ll forget you. This universe will forget you. You’ll spin in the void for eternity. It’s a fate worse than death. Please, Donna. Please just listen to me. Please just listen and don’t go. We’ll find another way. Please.”

He’s nearly begging her now and she can’t take the plaintive note in his voice. She wraps her arms around him and holds him tight, feeling his arms snake around her waist and steal her breath. She pretends not to notice the dampness pressed into her neck.

“I’ll forget you,” he says again. “I’ll forget the real you.”

“I forgot you once,” she says quietly. “And I remembered. You’ll remember me. Someday. Best mates don’t forget each other so easy. I’m stubborn that way.”

“I don’t want to forget.” He says it so quietly it’s almost a whimper and she pretends not to hear, just holds him close enough that she can muffle her own sobbing against his shoulder.

She’s saying goodbye to both Doctors, she knows. Her Doctor, her best friend, her companion. And this Doctor who is her Doctor in all the important ways but raw and pain-filled and world weary and when she thinks about him spinning alone in his huge, empty TARDIS, she feels a potent stab of guilt. Maybe it would have been better - kinder - to say goodbye to her whole Doctor and not this broken one.

Donna releases him because she thinks if she doesn’t she might never let go of him and she has a job to do. She’s Donna Noble, Super Temp. And she’d never shirk her responsibilities.

The Doctor’s still looking at her like a lost little boy so she stares at the door instead. She imagines her Doctor just beyond, knee deep in mechanical doodads with his screwdriver between his teeth and his brainy specs perched on the end of his nose and she smiles. If she’s facing an eternity of nothingness, at least she’ll have a lot of time to think about how stupid he looks when he’s accidentally electrocuting himself while he tinkers.

“Tell him…” she begins, and her throat tightens, choking her voice for a moment. “Tell him to look out for himself and keep the TARDIS tidy and to bring my stuff back to my mum and gramps and to water my plants and that I… that I lo– y’know, care for him. And I’ll be thinking of him. All that. Better that he’s not here. He would make such a fuss. Ever the drama queen, he is.” She tries to smile weakly but she suspects the effect is ruined by her trembling lip.  

“You don’t have to do this,” he says desperately, as she makes her way close enough to the jagged light that she has to squint to see him. He trails behind her, still gripping her hand.

“I do,” she says calmly.

“Please.”

She smiles sadly. And slips from his grip.

Donna Noble plunges into the abyss.

 


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I'm on a writing roll!!!! Hoping to finish this weekend or early next week.

It doesn’t hurt.

That’s the first thing that occurs to Donna once she’s traversed the brilliant light and the warmth and the wretched screaming has stopped when she realises it’s coming from her own throat and her voice doesn’t make a sound anymore.

And then she realises that means she still has a body. She doesn’t know why she’s surprised. He’d said she would. Time slows.

Donna’s eyes are clamped shut, originally against the blinding white light but now it’s dark behind her eyelids, cool, and empty. She’s afraid to open them, afraid to see the vast nothingness that she knows lies beyond her. The silence is already oppressive and she clings to the sound of her screams still echoing in her ears.

But she’s only human and curiosity gets the best of her. She opens her eyes.

She needn’t have bothered. It’s blackness, suffocating blackness. It doesn’t look any different from when her eyes were closed. She can’t even see her own ghostly pale limb extended before her and she might as well be a tangle of neurons floating in the void because the only way she knows she still has a body is that she can feel it.

But she can’t breathe.

Some shrinking reasonable part of her brain points out - of course she can’t breathe. Why did she expect to be able to breath? She’s in the space between universes, between timelines. Why on earth would she be able to breath?

But then panic sets in, quietly at first and then all consuming, filling her chest with cement, making her limbs twitch and her heart fluttery and undependable. She gasps the last couple of breaths she has and her vision begins to narrow, darkness pressing in on all sides. She’ll suffocate, alone, wrapped in blackness and her body will float in the vacuum for eternity.

She opens her mouth to scream but she has no air left and her voice doesn’t have a sound anyhow.

Just before she blacks out she feels something warm burbling up from the pit of her stomach, into her chest. It expands, compressing her bruised lungs and then that something surges forth from her, shimmery gold light that illuminates her body for a moment, makes her feel euphoric and yet indescribably alone as it leaves her. It dissipates into the space around her, shimmering for a moment, taking her mind off the urgency of her breathlessness.

Her blurry vision makes the golden light look like dappled sunlight. _How lovely_ , Donna thinks hazily and then - _don’t go_ \- and then nothing at all as darkness steals her away.

* * *

As soon as the Doctor returns he knows something has gone wrong.

His other self stands as if stopped in time, his face frozen in a sort of silent scream of anguish, his hand covering his open mouth. His features are horribly contorted, eyes red-rimmed.

And the crack in reality is closing, slowly. The light is going out.

“What did she do?”

The other Doctor doesn’t say anything, still as a statue.

“ _What did she do?_ ” the Doctor bellows.

The other Doctor starts and turns slowly. He’s not crying but somehow looks worse for it. He looks… dull. Like the light in his eyes has gone out.  

The Doctor crosses the room in a few long strides, grips his counterparts shoulders and shakes him once, hard. “Doctor!” he shouts. “Is she gone? Has she gone into the void?”

The other Doctor’s brow furrows. Something seems to fall into place when the Doctor shakes him and his expression settles into one of polite confusion. It looks odd given the tear tracks down his cheeks. “...Who?”

The Doctor lets out a roar of frustration and his double looks taken aback. The Doctor doesn’t have time to spare him a thought. He whirls around and races back through the door he’d come from. He has minutes, seconds maybe before the crack seals and even less time before Donna succumbs to the vacuum. _If she’s not already dead_ , he thinks, and then desperately pushes the thought away.

He barges through the door and nearly straight into Jack, who is standing guard just like he’d requested nearly two hours ago.

Maybe he owes Jack a little more credit.

“Doctor!” Jack exclaims. “What’s going on?”

“My friend,” the Doctor says. “She’s… gone. I have to go find her. A TARDIS isn’t really meant to travel in the void but I have to try. And I need you to do something for me. Come on.”

They race up two flights of stairs and barrel into the room where the TARDIS sits, perfectly healthy and humming serenely. The Doctor feels affection welling in his chest. His oldest friend. They’ll be able to save Donna together.

The Doctor fumbles in his coat pockets for his screwdriver and tosses it to Jack who catches it handily. He then takes out a small vial of clear liquid and holds it to the light. “Drink this.”

Jack gives him a dubious look but takes the bottle from the Doctor and throws it back like a shot. He makes a face. “Yikes Doc, don’t take up bartending.”

The Doctor ignores him. “She’ll be conscious for 15 seconds and alive for two minutes. I don’t know how long she’s already been there so I’ve got to be quick and the TARDIS can only stay in the void for a matter of minutes. But you absolutely mustn't call us back before I’ve got her. 2 minutes and 15 seconds exactly. Then setting 214 Squash 0.3.” He nods at his screwdriver.

“Yes sir,” Jack says.

“Okay old girl,” the Doctor says, patting the TARDIS. “We’ve got a bit of a mission. I hope you’re up for it.”

“Doctor?” Jack asks soberly. “What happens if the TARDIS spends too long in the void?”

“Weeell…  best not think about it,” the Doctor tries to say flippantly as possible. “Explosive loss of trans-dimensionality isn’t great for anyone... have you ever seen an inside-out universe?”

“Right,” says Jack, his voice full of false bravado. He swallows audibly. “Try to avoid that.”

The Doctor smiles grimly. “I’ll do my very best.”

* * *

When Donna opens her eyes, for a moment she doesn’t remember where she is and then she realises there’s something wrapped around her.

She panics. She rolls and contorts, her limbs convulsing, her lungs screaming with the effort. Something that feels like a hand closes around her upper arm.

“Donna,” someone whispers soothingly. “Donna, please stop struggling.”

Her eyes snap open and she reaches out blindly.

“No,” the same voice says. “Don’t touch that.”

An arm grasps hers gently around the wrist and draws her back but not before her fingers brush something cool and smooth and the darkness before her stirs with blue-green ripples like a vast ocean by moonlight. The disturbance disappears as soon as her hand is withdrawn.

“I can… speak,” Donna says haltingly. She’s still frightened to turn around, frightened to see the form her hallucination has taken. “I can breathe.”

Is this death?

She can tell there’s a light behind her, a dull blue light that seems oddly familiar somehow.

“Look at me,” the voice says.

She turns.

It’s the Doctor. Her Doctor.

“What… what are you doing here?”

“I came for you,” he says simply.  By the light of his screwdriver his features are shadowy and guarded but his eyes blaze with warmth.

“Am I dying?” she asks weakly.

He doesn’t say anything so she knows the answer. Her head lolls to the side, her vision blurring. She gives him a hazy smile. “I’m glad you came to see me,” she slurs. Her eyes flutter closed.

“No, no, you don’t,” the Doctor says. “Stay with me now.”

Gently, cautiously, he slips his arms around her waist, supporting her limp body with his.

“Hands,” she says faintly.

“Hush,” he hums and she leans her head on his chest, filling her lungs with his familiar scent. She wants to cry at the feeling of his stubble against her forehead, at the pungent smell of his leather coat. But in these final moments with him, she tells herself not to waste time feeling sad.

For a few long, perfect moments they float together, cocooned in darkness, illuminated by the eerie glow of the sonic screwdriver. If this is dying, Donna thinks, it’s not half bad. There’s worse ways to go than held safely in the arms of her best friend, even if she strongly suspects he’s a figment of her imagination.

“Donna,” he murmurs, his hand coming up to cup her flushed cheek. “We’ve got to think our way out of here.”

“Can’t,” she says. “Too tired. Will think of something later. Need to rest now. Spaceman.”

Her lips curl into a feeble grin at the nickname and she feels his grip around her tighten. He jostles her gently. “Can’t get out of here if you’ve gone all limp and rubbery and useless.”

She smiles serenely, eyes still half-closed. “Rubber is very useful.”

The Doctor laughs lightly and the sound is sweet and sad in her ears, like a forgotten song from her childhood. Her limbs feel like she’s underwater.

“Come on Donna,” he whispers. He tips her chin up so that he can smooth her wild red hair from her face. “Just _think._ ”

Her eyes flutter open because he’s close now, so close she can see sweat glistening on his skin, the pale freckles dotting his cheeks, the sharp curve of his crooked nose. She wants to remember all of it.

And then he’s kissing her, sweetly and softly, his cool hand still curled under her cheek, his arm wrapped around her waist. She kisses him back without thinking. It seems like the thing to do, when you’re about to die even though it’s against every instinct she has. So she commits every single thing about him to memory, the tangy taste of him, the feel of him curled around her, the way his thumb strokes her cheek so softly, how cool his skin is to the touch. She closes her eyes and kisses him more deeply and something erupts within her, the same glimmering light that had escaped her before.  

They pull apart and it spills from him and from her, coalescing in a golden orb that remains suspended between them. Her thoughts are racing and she feels dizzy with the sudden clarity of her mind.

“I know what to do,” she whispers, her head spinning, her lips still brushing his. She feels him grin.

The golden light goes out.

* * *

The TARDIS is dematerialising.

The Doctor goes to reach for the handle to open the door and his hands fall through nothing. There’s no mistaking the familiar wheezing at it disappears from sight.

“Er… _what now_?” Jack asks, incredulously.

The Doctor’s hearts sink and a frisson of hot rage streaks through him. He’d been so close.

He lets loose a growl, grabs a delicate glass paper weight from the desk nearest and hurls it at the wall opposite. It shatters and Jack flinches, fear flickering in his eyes for the first time that day.

“How could she do this to me?” he roars. “After everything I’ve done for her!”

“Doctor,” Jack says cautiously. “You know the TARDIS. You know she does what needs to be done–”

“Not the TARDIS,” the Doctor bellows. “ _Donna_!”

He paces back and forth, sends papers flying, throws a stapler so hard it lodges itself into the carpet.  He can’t take it. He’d already lost her once and now she’d flitted out of his reach again.  And she hadn’t even said goodbye.

He flings himself down in a chair, his breathing thunderous, and puts his head in his hands. “How could she do this me?” he repeats, quieter now.

“Is Donna… is Donna your friend?” Jack asks gently. He’s eyeing the Doctor like he’s a ticking bomb having never seen his friend lose control so magnificently.

“I promised,” he says weakly. “I promised I’d take care of her.”

“You do your best,” Jack offers. “I’ve met the kind of people you bring along with you, Doctor. If there’s something crazy and heroic to be done, they’ll do it. You’re a bad influence on them, I reckon.”

Jack is smiling crookedly and the Doctor knows he means to lighten the mood, but it makes his heart ache and he crumples, scrubs his hands against his eyes until spots pop up in front of his vision.

“I’m sorry Doctor,” Jack says. “She must have been special.”

“She was,” the Doctor answers, his throat raw. “She was the most important woman in the whole universe.”


	8. Chapter 8

Jack is the first one to notice.

“Doctor,” he says and then when he realises what’s happening, “Doctor come over here!”

The Doctor turns. There’s no mistaking it. The familiar blue of the TARDIS is fading into view. He launches himself across the room and the doors open as soon as he approaches them.

Donna has collapsed on the console room floor.

He can hardly recognise her but for the shock of ginger hair. Her exposed skin is mottled purple. Frost has gathered on her eyelashes, at the corners of her mouth, in her hair, like delicate spiderwebs. Her lips are blistered, violet. Her chest rises and falls, but each inhalation sounds like it’s sapping her of what little strength she has left. Her eyes are open and glassy and unseeing.

“Donna,” the Doctor breathes and rushes to her side. He hears footsteps on the grating and suddenly Jack appears next to him.

“Oh my god,” Jack breathes, his face wrinkling in horror. “What happened to her?”

 

* * *

The other Doctor is piecing together memories.

He knows how he got here. He knows the Starsax Corporation had used a crack in the fabric of reality to manufacture huon energy. He knows his other self is here from another universe. He knows something had sealed the crack. Someone. He can’t remember who.

He goes over the story in his head again. He’d been sitting by the Thames, brooding. Per usual. Thinking about Rose. Or had he been? He doesn’t remember. Although she’d been near constantly in his thoughts and he can’t imagine he’d have stopped to think about something else. But then something had tipped him off and he’d masked the residues of time travel on his skin and he’d been taken to this place. Somewhere underground, he thinks. It’s always an underground lair. The best villains have underground lairs. The Serin have sprawling underground cities. Sepulchral spires that scrape the earth above. Dangling roots the height of skyscrapers. Neat rows of houses that never see the light. And they’re as villainous as they come.

 _Focus_ , he chides himself. Someone had sacrificed themselves. He feels a familiar dull ache in his chest. Another loss. He cared about them.

He’s a genius and occasionally it pays off. He knows what amnesia around a tear in reality comes from - knows logically what must have happened to accompany the pain. So why can’t he remember?  

Frustrated, he scrubs a hand across his forehead, glaring at the spot where he knows the crack was mere minutes ago. If he could just reach inside, grasp the one who had been lost. If he could just see them, he’d remember. He’s sure of it.

Then something humming in the back of his mind steals his thoughts.

It’s a familiar song, mournful and ancient and comforting and he knows instantly it’s his TARDIS but it’s not _his_ TARDIS. It must be the other Doctor’s TARDIS, reaching out. And as if under a spell, he goes toward the sound, follows it through the door and down the corridor, up the stairs until it reaches a fever pitch and all he can hear and see is her eery music.

Her door is ajar, the room awash with the warm amber light that spills from her. It’s a sight that will always be comforting even if she’s not quite his.

Donna’s Doctor and Jack don’t notice him when he comes in. They’re too distracted, stooped over a human body so horribly disfigured the Doctor desperately wants to avert his gaze. And yet, something curious happens. Recognition doesn’t come in a rush like he thought it would, but something sharpens in the intensity of his longing and he knows that this person, this woman, is the one who’d jumped.

It feels like he’s only just noticed a knife stuck between his ribs. His pain takes his breath away, no longer an undercurrent but overwhelming and radiating and worse than almost anything he’s felt in his long life. The combination of the hurt and the TARDIS song make his head feel as if it’s about to split in two. She’s going to die. She is dying. And he wants to save her.

He _needs_ to save her.

He moves forward in a trance. He thinks this must have been what it was like for her when she flung herself into the void. He’s calm and purposeful despite the screaming in his head.

Finally, Jack takes notice of him.

“What are you doing?” his other self asks, lightly, and then with more alarm when he raises his hands, presses them gently to her temples. He can feel the energy rising from the pit of his stomach, can feel it burbling through his veins and cutting through his sinews and he knows when it explodes from him he won’t be able to control it. He’ll give it all to her.

* * *

 

Donna jolts back into consciousness with a start. 

Before she knows what’s happening her field of vision is completely blocked by a shaggy head of hair, a familiar scent pressed into her shoulder. She extracts herself from his vice-grip and twines her arms around the neck, uncaring that her back is pressed uncomfortably into the grating or about the crick in her neck or how it feels like every single part of her body is burning and freezing all at once.  Donna allows herself a few errant tears while no one can see and the saltiness stings her cheeks.

He pulls back enough that she can see his whole face, the mismatch of features she adores, ragged and tired.

“You look like shit,” she croaks.

“You’re one to talk,” he laughs and then holds her close again and hums something that sounds like, “my Donna.” She thinks that if the skin on her cheeks didn’t feel flayed she’d probably blush.

“Well, it’s been a bit of a hard day,” she says. She’s in the TARDIS but she doesn’t remember how she got there or how she’d managed to pilot the TARDIS at all, let alone while she was passed out.

“What happened?” she asks.

“You were exposed to a vacuum for 2 minutes and 37 seconds.”.

“I was there for that bit,” she says with a nonchalant wave. “I meant… how did I get here? How am I… y’know… alive?”

The Doctor sobers. “You regenerated.”

“I… _what_?”

“Well… kind of.”

Donna scrambles to her feet, ignoring the way her muscles scream in protest and fending off his attempts to help her. “But… you… I… _what_?!”

The Doctor looks away and Donna follows his gaze. The other Doctor is slumped on the jump seat, his face pale. She races over.

“Oh god,” Donna gasps. “What did he do?”

“He saved you,” the Doctor says simply. There’s a steely note in his voice she can’t quite identify.  

“He’s not… he hasn’t...”

“He’s not dead,” he says. “He’ll be in a healing coma for a little while. But he’ll be… all right.”

The Doctor’s expression is pinched and Donna suddenly feels as if there’s a thick glass barrier between them as she watches him, watching his other self as he stirs slightly on the jump seat. “We’ll bring him back to his TARDIS. She’ll take care of him.”

Donna doesn’t pay attention to the whirl of activity that follows. She hears the wheezing of the TARDIS dematerialising and she knows her Doctor and Jack are stealing glances at her. She doesn’t look at them. Instead, she sits next to the other Doctor, and holds his hand. She straightens his tie. Rubs a smudge of dirt from his forehead. He sleeps on impassively. Then when there’s nothing left to fuss over she lays her head on his shoulder and closes her eyes.

A flash of a memory comes back to her. Gold light. And her head on his chest just like this. Surrounded by dark and silence though, not by the comforting hum of the TARDIS. He’d been there with her, somehow. Fending off the blackness. She frowns. Her lungs felt like they were full of ice but she could breathe. There was something holding back the void. Something vast and ancient.

“Donna.” The Doctor’s quiet voice startles her from her thoughts. Her eyes snap open. “We’re here.”

“Oh,” Donna says. She smoothes the other Doctor’s fringe and kisses his forehead. “Time for you to be off,” she says. Saying goodbye to him for the second time.

Two Doctors and Jack make an ungainly trio as they hoist the unconscious Time Lord between them and leave the TARDIS. Donna doesn’t wait for them to return. She goes to her bedroom, strips, and showers as gingerly as she can until her raw skin can’t take the heat. She feels like she’s lived two weeks in the last day. All she wants to do is scrub the strange tangy smell from her skin and burrow into her covers. Wrapped in her thick dressing gown and perched in front of her vanity though, she starts to relax.

It’s some time before the Doctor knocks on her door. She’s sat on her bed, trying to read, but her thoughts are reeling. She still doesn’t understand why she survived or why she seems to have come through a vacuum no worse for wear except for her tender skin and sore muscles. She has visions of sci-fi movies and exploding limbs but all her body parts seem to be fully intact.

The Doctor enters and sits at the end of her bed and looks distinctly awkward as if he’s trying not to take up any more space than is strictly necessary.   Among the soft palette and warmth of her bedroom, he looks thoroughly overdressed in his suit. She smiles to herself and his lips quirk. “What are you smiling at?” he asks.

“Oh… just… nothing,” she says warmly and dog-ears her page. She sets her book aside expectantly and watches him squirm.

“What do you remember, Donna?” he asks her finally.

She hesitates a moment. “Aside from my head exploding?” she quips.

“Yes well, aside from that, obviously,” he says very sensibly. “Which you do seem to have recovered from admirably, by the way. Not a visible chunk of brain to be spotted.”

Donna smiles and gives a silly little mock bow.  She pauses, considering. “I don’t remember much,” she says honestly. “I remember stepping into the light. I remember it hurting quite a lot. And then I remember the darkness and I remember feeling like my skin was bubbling and I couldn’t breathe and that’s about when I blacked out.”

“Well that’s your bog standard vacuum exposure,” the Doctor says. “Lesser species don’t tend to–”

“Oi mate, who are you calling a ‘lesser species’?” Donna snaps.

“Right,” says the Doctor nervously. “Right, yeah. Sorry. It’s just that  Time Lords can come through a vacuum unscathed so I forget that it wreaks such havoc on other–”

“I’ll show you unscathed in a minute,” Donna growls and the Doctor smiles his infuriating smile, the one she strongly suspects means he thinks she’s adorable when she’s threatening him with bodily harm.

She rolls her eyes and wracks her brains, trying to fill in the gaps in her memory. “I remember someone with me. It was you, I think. There was a load of gold light. We…” she trails off and feels her face getting hot. She remembers the feeling of his mouth gently moving over hers. “We... well something happened and it unlocked something in me… I knew what to do, I knew how to get the TARDIS to me. It was like at my wedding. Like how you summoned the TARDIS with the huon particles inside me. I did the same thing. I brought her to me. And she carried me out of the void.”

The Doctor is looking pensive. “Interesting,” he says.

“Oh?”

“I think it was the metacrisis,” he says. “A visual representation of the Time Lord part of your brain. The last vestiges of regenerative energy inside you. Lucky, really.”

Donna snorts. “Yeah, lucky I nearly died then I had to forget you, and then my brains almost exploded all over again over my porridge one morning.”

He looks stricken but all he can think to say is: “your brain wouldn’t have _literally_ exploded.”

Useless.

“So what did the other Doctor do?” she asks, keen not to wade into murkier waters. The metacrisis is still a sore subject for both of them albeit for very different reasons.

The Doctor instantly goes back to squirming, fidgeting with the corner of her duvet and generally looking shifty.

“Spit it out, Martian.”

“He gave his remaining regenerations to save you,” the Doctor says, to his feet.

Donna’s jaw drops and she takes a swing at the Doctor without thinking and makes contact with his arm. He winces. “Oi! Why are you hitting _me?!_ ”

“Why didn’t you stop him?!”

“I didn’t have the time! He just did it before I could say anything!”

“Don’t talk rot. You could have stopped him! You could have gone all scary Time Lord on him and made him stop. You could have physically thrown yourself in front of him. You could have stopped him!” Donna doesn’t know when she’s started shouting, but he’s shouting right back at her.

“He’d made up his mind! Who am I to stop him?”

“I can’t believe you let him do that! Who’s going to protect this universe now when he inevitably goes and gets himself blown up? He hasn’t even got anyone to look after him! He’s all by himself. You’re completely rubbish by yourself! He’ll last another two weeks and then–”

“ _YOU WERE GOING TO DIE_!” the Doctor roars, throwing his hands up in exasperation. Donna’s open mouth closes with a click. “You were going to die and I couldn’t save you. I’d failed you. I couldn’t… I couldn’t… so I let him, okay? I let him! I’m sorry.”

She sits, stunned for a moment. “Oh,” she says, deflated. “O-okay.”

He looks tormented. “I know it was wrong but you should have seen what you looked like fresh out of the void. It was horrible. I couldn’t look at you but I couldn’t look away and I just… I couldn’t have just let you die like that. I couldn’t…  And you didn’t even say goodbye and I just I couldn’t take it. I can’t… I can’t lose… I need...” he trails off his half-sentences and scrubs a hand through his hair. “I’m sorry.”

There’s not much to say to that. Instead, she wriggles down the bed and wraps her arms around him from behind, leaning her head against his back. He tenses and gives her a sideways look like a terrified chicken.

“I’m sorry,” she says, voice muffled. “That I didn’t say goodbye.”

He’s rigid a moment longer and then he lets out a huge sigh that makes his fringe flutter. She listens to the double beat of his hearts in his back and he covers one of his hands with hers.

“I thought it would be too hard,” she says honestly. “I wouldn’t have been able to do it if I had to look you in the face before I jumped.” It’s easier like this, she thinks, where she can’t see his expressive dark eyes. Easier to be open. Maybe they should have all their difficult conversations face-to-back.

He doesn’t say anything, he just squeezes her hand and sighs again. “When did I start picking up companions even more prone to self-sacrifice than I am?”  

“Oh don’t be daft,” says Donna. “It’s you. You make us brave.”


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SO sorry for the delay. Thanks so much to everyone for reading and commenting!!! I've had such lovely feedback on this little story and it really does inspire me to keep going and sharing things so I really appreciate it! 
> 
> I'm thinking I will write one more wee in this 'verse because the shipper inside me desperately wants at least ONE universe's Doctor and Donna to properly get together... but that will come along eventually.

 

Things change after the Doctor’s run in with his other self and they don’t. 

He wakes up slumped unceremoniously over the jump seat with his TARDIS cooing nervously in his ear. 

“I’m alive,” he says incredulously, his first thought, and then his second thought is that his other self could have at least arranged his limbs in a more dignified manner. He neatens his suit with a huff. 

But he’s also irrevocably different. His voice echoes in the cavernous room and he feels distinctly lonely like he hasn’t since just after losing Rose. He throws himself into traveling with enthusiasm bordering on manic obsession and there’s no one to tell him what to do. He follows his whims. It should be freeing but it feels stifling and he still finds himself reaching for someone’s hand when he starts to run away. He’s unhappy but he’s pretty good at pretending.

He dreams of stormy eyes with a ring of gold round the center when he ought to have been dreaming of sultry brown ones. 

So when he meets a woman with clear blue eyes nearly the right shade (no starburst, no iron grey ocean) and a shock of close-cropped red hair he takes her with him. She’s kind and bright and they make a good team and he doesn’t bother asking how long she plans to stay with him - he can see in the set of her shoulders and the steely glint in her eye. She’s young but she’s sensible beyond her years and she grounds him. She’s good for him. 

Ultimately her practicality is his undoing because after a glorious year she tells him it’s enough, that she has to settle down and make a life for herself, finish her degree in biochemistry, and this larking about the universe is impractical and does he really plan to run for his entire life? 

He says, “you could run with me,” and shuffles his feet and looks at the ground then he regrets it because when he looks up she’s giving him a pitying smile. He almost  _ wants _ her to go after that. 

So then he’s alone again, as ever, and that’s okay. His hearts have healed a little. 

He wishes he could have seen the face of the one for whom he’d sacrificed everything - whole and unmarred by the effects of the void - before he’d blacked out. He knows he’s met her before. But the universe is vast and London somehow even moreso and he doesn’t expect to meet her again. 

And then he does. He knocks into her in the car park of a Sainbury’s and he just  _ knows.  _

“You!” he exclaims. “It’s… you!”

This universe’s Donna Noble rolls her eyes. “Well of course it’s me.  And I thought I told you to bugger off the last time.” 

She rebalances her groceries, turns on her heel, and begins striding away. 

He scrambles to keep up with her.

Eventually he convinces her that no, he’s not some nutter following her around and yes, she can take a picture of him to send to her mother in case he kidnaps her, and she agrees to get a cup of coffee with him (tea for him coffee for her). They talk. He apologises properly for everything that’d happened and he sees her eyes soften. 

They sit over forgotten tea for two hours and then she says she has to go but she sounds like she’d rather stay. She gives him her phone number and tells him to phone her but “not for any funny business, just to, y’know, talk or something… if you need it.” 

He decides it best to broach the delicate issue of running away with him and traveling the universe for the rest of her natural life at a later date. 

Eventually he does ask, though. After they’ve talked loads more over lunch and over a nebula or two. It’s odd, he thinks, almost human doing it this way, maybe a testament to his newly human lifespan. He feels like he’s dating her. But when he asks she flings her arms around his neck and before he can react, she disappears into the TARDIS without another word. He finds her curled up in the room the TARDIS has created for her with the duvet up to her chin and her eyes are shining and it’s better than his dreams. 

“How long are you going to travel with me?” he asks as they sit together in the library. He’s always tempting fate. But she’s soft and lovely and exuding warmth and comfort and he basks in her glow. 

“Forever,” she says, and for once he lets himself believe her. 


End file.
